As I get older, I can see so many things, not the least of which is how I used to conceive of time in the standard, old paradigm/left-brained way. Life was kind of like an extended school experience. First you learned lesson A, then went on to lesson B, and so forth. Once you were done with one phase of life, you moved linearly to the next, then to the next. I dearly wanted to move beyond my passion for England/English church music -- to, in effect, graduate from that school -- so that I could cleanly move into a new phase. I couldn't focus on choral evensong and the Goddess, or English history and the emerging Aquarian age. I couldn't both move beyond my family/early life story/education and remain connected to them. Heck, even with Duluth, it was so tempting over this last week to wipe my hands clean and say, "Wow, what a relief, I finally finished that phase. I can move forward now." And certainly the journey out to Minnesota was energetically powerful, necessary, and reminded me that there are new things on the horizon.
But nothing is ever "over". I haven't left anything behind, either in this lifetime or in my many lifetimes. They are all with me, a blanket of energies and colors and warm threads woven around me. We are constantly weaving, pulling new threads and colors in, or finding old ones that got lost, and bringing them back into the blanket. The Duluth trip forced me to release some constrictions around my heart, and I have been able to re-weave family and Smith College in, in small but rich ways. And I will never "release" Duluth completely -- I don't do "home" in a traditional American way, but it was more home on a deeper level on and off during the 1990's and 2020's than many places I have lived. That little city at the head of Lake Superior (and my friends there) are in my heart and they always will be.
And this also has to do with the process of ever-refining one's gift to the world. Once again, last week, I found myself chafing against some of the material I was listening to online, finding it a little too "old paradigm" -- I can't put a finger on it exactly. And I was doing my own old thing of comparing myself: "these experts (in astrology/physics/metaphysics) are right, and in order to become an expert too, I need to acquire their skills." And of course, that's ridiculous (unless I passionately wish to acquire a specific new skill). At 69, I know who I am. I am a Goddess-centered visionary and mystic, woven of threads of a specific family, place, and time in history -- and England, choral evensong, music of Herbert Howells, my awesome (private school, Smith College, Royal Holloway/U. of London, and Parsons School of Design) education, writing as a letters correspondent at Time Inc., living or working at Pendle Hill and other retreat centers, traveling around the country in a little red car, living in Minnesota, Montana, and various home bases back east, painting, taking care of my dying mother, teaching at a community college, writing my blog and, increasingly, being focused on the Goddess -- these are all unique colors of wool. They are my magic blanket. In painting terms, they are my palette. They are my training, and what makes me, me. They are my superpowers, what I bring to my unique role moving forward.
Similarly, while I think we are entering a powerful, defining moment in history, and things will "never be the same again", I'm trying to release some of the linear thinking that I am hearing. What is true of me, I assume, must be true of humanity at large. We will be bringing our threads of experience forward (and those who don't survive into the new era will still be part of the blanket of energy enfolding us). We will still need to keep weaving all of our colorful threads into the narrative of the human story and keep making sense of them, perhaps more than ever.
